MHI Blog -- ProMat 2015 featured over 110 Educational Seminars that can now be viewed online. These Webinars offer in-depth education on best practices, the latest equipment and technology innovations and leading supply chain trends. Watch, listen and learn from today’s manufacturing and supply chain solution experts.

MHI Blog -- The University of Tennessee (UT) Global Supply Chain Institute recently published a report focused on warehouse best practices. The report entitled "The ABCs of DCs: Distribution Center Management: A Best Practices Overview" is the fifth in UT’s Game Changing Trends in Supply Chain series.

The research collected identifies best practices for modern distribution centers across 11 key functions.

EBN -- Unless you've been living in a bubble, you have probably heard about the threat of a supply chain talent gap.

To lessen the threat, companies will have to start thinking of alternative ways of addressing the problem. A recent DHL report targeting the automotive sector provides a few ideas that can be applied more broadly across other industries, including electronics.

USA Today -- Amazon is among a host of companies asking the Federal Aviation Administration to expand the abilities of small commercial drones and the traffic control system that would monitor them.

The online retailer specifically wants to be able to fly drones beyond the line of sight of pilots and to allow pilots to monitor multiple drones. The FAA's current proposal, announced in February, would allow individual drones weighing up to 55 pounds to fly within sight of their remote pilots during daylight hours.

Supply Management -- The Internet of Things will give supply chains a $1.9 trillion (£1.3 trillion) boost, according to a report.

DHL and Cisco’s study said the 'Internet of Things' (IoT) – the connection of physical objects to the web via sensor technology - has huge potential to help deliver more efficient and transparent supply chains.

eMarketer -- According to Adobe, the average retail site got 26.6% of its US visits from smartphones in 2014, and 17.8% from tablets, leaving more than half coming from the desktop. The desktop still accounts for a majority of sales—72% of the total in Q1 2015, according to Branding Brand—but visits from mobile are continuing to rise.

The Wall Street Journal -- The slow movement of imports and exports illustrates how the logistics of global trade have fallen terribly out of sync. Ocean carriers are deploying progressively bigger vessels. Some would be taller than the Empire State Building if stood on end. They can carry more than twice as much cargo as their predecessors, and are more fuel-efficient than smaller vessels. To ensure they travel as full as possible, shipping lines have formed alliances to combine their loads.

But the floating behemoths are overwhelming many U.S. ports that weren’t built to handle such supersize ships. Of the 10 busiest U.S. ports by container volume, as calculated by the American Association of Port Authorities, at least seven are grappling regularly with congestion.

EBN -- Industry 4.0 is coming to the extended supply chain. Over the coming decade, innovations like predictive analytics, 3D printing, and wearable technologies will change the supply chain even as workforce shortages intensify. Customer demands and competition are the driving forces, according to the 2015 MHI Annual Industry Report, "Supply Chain Innovation — Making the impossible possible." MHI, an international trade association that represents the material handling, logistics and supply chain industry, produced the report with Deloitte Consulting.

Business Insider -- Amazon is launching a new marketplace for business owners that will provide a one-stop shop for everything a company needs, from office artwork and snacks to wholesale deep fryers and traffic signs.

Amazon Business is an expansion of what was once Amazon Supply, the wholesale site it launched in 2012. At its peak, Supply had about 2.2 million products, with millions of business customers, spending billions of dollars. Amazon Business will be much bigger, boasting hundreds of millions of products — and the company expects sales to multiply accordingly.

Supply Chain Quarterly -- Companies that fail to take a holistic view of infrastructure—the physical and informational assets required to run a supply chain—sometimes make capital-investment decisions that are detrimental in the long run.

The Wall Street Journal -- A growing global middle class and the near-ubiquity of e-commerce means multinational companies are reaching more customers and making more sales. The challenge now is how to deliver the goods to the most far-flung locations, where infrastructure is underdeveloped and the ability to track deliveries and sales likewise opaque.

Mark Clouse, chief growth officer for Mondelez International Inc. —a snack food maker whose brands include Oreo, Ritz and Trident gum—says the company is starting to "create partnerships" with the local supply chain and distributors in emerging markets.

DC Velocity -- It's the rare warehouse these days that hasn't engaged in some type of cost cutting or performance improvement program. Some have turned to technology in a bid to streamline operations. Others have taken the process route, putting programs like continuous improvement plans in place. Still others have changed up their personnel (for example, bringing in highly effective managers to run their facilities), pulled up stakes and moved to a location with lower labor costs or tax advantages, or in the case of shippers, outsourced their warehousing operations.

Manufacturing.net -- Supply chains are a vital component of every organization’s global business operations and the backbone of today’s global economy. However, security chiefs everywhere are concerned about how open they are to an abundance of risk factors. A range of valuable and sensitive information is often shared with suppliers and, when that information is shared, direct control is lost. This leads to an increased risk of its confidentiality, integrity or availability being compromised.

Enterprise Apps Today -- Logistics is a key area of focus for companies hoping to improve their supply chains, experts say.

As the supply chain becomes more complex with suppliers, their customers and consumers interacting with each other across the globe and across different channels, it’s more important than ever for companies to get and maintain good control of their logistics.

How can they do that? They can start by paying attention to what experts say are eight of the top trends impacting logistics and supply chains.

Gizmodo -- Like C-3PO and R2-D2, some robot pairs are a match made in mechanized heaven. Now, a new team, Fetch and Freight, can eliminate much of the efficiency-botching human labor from warehouses, getting that Amazon shipment to your door faster than ever.

It’s a system San Jose-based Fetch Robotics developed to help retailers be faster and more agile in their deliveries. Companies are adapting as online buying options like Amazon Prime, Google Express, and eBay Now have gotten more popular.